Floor Statements

Are we currently in morning business?

Madam President, today President Bush announced he was sending the Colombian Free Trade Agreement to the Congress. He expects and demands that we take it up and pass it. I regret he has taken that action because he proposes that we continue failed trade practices of the past. That makes precious little sense for this country's interests. I am in favor of trade and plenty of it. Trade advances our interests provided it is fair and mutually beneficial between our country and those with which we have agreements. But I want to cite the record of President Bush in the last 7 years because when I say our trade policy is a failure, let me describe it this way.

When President Bush took office in 2001, our trade deficit was $429 billion. That is way too high. But 7 years later, our trade deficit is $815 billion. When the President took office, our trade deficit was $429 billion. Now it is almost double, $815 billion. In 7 years, this President's trade policies have doubled the trade deficit. We are not only collecting a massive amount of debt around the necks of the American people, they are encouraging the shipping of U.S. jobs overseas.

Now the President says: I have a new policy. Let's do more of the same. If you have trade policies that double the trade debt in this country, and you say let's do more of the same, there is something wrong with that.

Last month we lost 80,000 jobs in this country. Just last week it was announced, last month we lost 80,000 jobs. And what do we get this week from the President? Another proposal of a free-trade agreement.

Let me describe. We have had plenty of practice with these trade agreements. Some long while ago, we had a proposal: We have to have a free-trade agreement with Mexico. At the time we had a $1.5 billion trade surplus with Mexico. The first President Bush began negotiating a free-trade agreement with Mexico. He had a bunch of economists tell us how wonderful this would be; if we can just have a free-trade agreement with Mexico, it would be nirvana. So we did. I didn't vote for it. I led the opposition. But we went from a $1.5 billion trade surplus with Mexico to now a $74 billion trade deficit with Mexico. Think of that. We went from a $1.5 billion surplus to a $74 billion deficit. We are borrowing money from the Mexicans in trade. It is unbelievable. Talk about failed agreements.

This agreement with Colombia is modeled after NAFTA. It is the same. You have a failure. Let's do more of it, the President says. I don't understand that at all. It is a curious strategy to decide: OK, let's hold up a failure and let's suggest we should double it. I don't understand it.

I was watching CNN this afternoon. Wolf Blitzer, who is a terrific broadcaster--kind of breathless from time to time--was describing the President coming out in his announcement and essentially demanding that the Congress pass this free-trade agreement. Wolf Blitzer put up on the screen the description the President offered, saying: Most of Colombian-made goods come into this country with no tariff on them. Many of American goods go to Colombia with a tariff as high as 35 percent.

They put up on the screen this zero and 35 with two arrows, Colombia, United States. I am thinking to myself, it is curious that the President uses this to say we have to have this trade agreement with Colombia, as if we have no leverage with Colombia. We are sending a lot of money to Colombia, and have for a long while, to help President Uribe fight the insurgents, the FARC, the insurgent organization. We are sending American tax dollars down there in substantial quantity. We don't need to do a bad trade agreement with a failed NAFTA strategy with Colombia to get them to reduce their tariffs, if they have tariffs on American goods going to Colombia. All we have to do is say: Look, we are sending a lot of money down here to help you. Get rid of your tariffs. If we don't have tariffs on your goods coming north, don't you put tariffs on American goods going south.

We don't have to pass a bad trade agreement to get that result. We just have to say to President Uribe: We have been bankrolling a fair amount of the effort that you are making, and we are doing it because we want to help you. But in the process of wanting to help you with American tax dollars, we expect you to remove the tariffs.

I have met with President Uribe. I have been in his office in Colombia. I have a lot of respect for him. It is a tough job down there. They have real problems. Some say: This discussion about labor issues and trade agreements is not so relevant. It is pretty relevant in a country where one labor leader is killed every week on average this year. It is pretty relevant when 97 percent of the killings of Colombia labor leaders going back to 2001 have been unpunished--97 percent. It is pretty relevant, it seems to me. I accept that President Uribe has a lot of issues, a lot of problems. We as a country have tried to help him. But it seems to me it doesn't help anybody for this country and for President Bush to try to push through a bad trade agreement.

While I have respect for President Uribe of Colombia, I don't have great happiness about President Uribe being involved in America's political system. He decides apparently that he believes he should comment on our Presidential race. He says, of one of our Presidential candidates, ``I think it is for political calculations that he is making a statement,'' referring to a statement that one of the political candidates for President said that he didn't support this trade agreement with Colombia. So the President of Colombia says:

I think it is for political calculations that he is making

a statement.

I don't think we need the President of Colombia describing motives of our Presidential candidates. There is a perfectly reasonable approach to support or perhaps oppose the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. The reasonable approach is to say we like failure. We want to do more of the same. So give us what you gave us in NAFTA and run a small trade surplus up to a huge deficit.

But there is also a perfectly logical reason for a Presidential candidate or a Member of Congress who may wish to

say at some point: We ought to do a U-turn and say this country is for trade. We are for trade and plenty of it. We believe in trade and plenty of trade. But we demand and insist at long last that it be fair to our country. I don't think the Colombia agreement by itself is some sort of pivotal moment. I don't allege that. But I do say I don't think we ought to sit here with a President who has doubled the trade deficit in 7 years and take advice about what we do in the next 90 days.

These trade agreements have not worked in our country's interest. Trade agreements should be mutually beneficial when we negotiate them, whether it is with China, Mexico, Canada, Europe, or Japan. They ought to be mutually beneficial. I am flatout tired of seeing the results of bad trade agreements.

I guess some may say if you have an $815 billion trade deficit, it doesn't matter. That means over $2 billion a day we are putting in the hands of foreigners because that is what we are buying every day that exceeds our ability to export. We are importing $2 billion a day more than we are exporting in goods. That debt someday will have to be repaid with a lower standard of living in the United States. You would think at long last someone would say this strategy isn't working.

It is true that whether it is the Colombian Free Trade Agreement, the free-trade agreement with Mexico or Canada or the agreements we have with China, it is true that no one in this Chamber is going to lose their job to a bad trade agreement. It is other people who will lose their jobs--people working in manufacturing plants making bicycles or wagons or producing textiles or in high tech.

I wrote a piece once about Natasha Humphries who lost her job. She wasn't a textile worker. She went to Stanford and did everything right, a young African-American woman who did everything right and then went to work for Palm Pilot. Regrettably, her last job was to train the engineer from India who was hired at one-fifth the salary they were paying Natasha Humphries.

So should American youngsters who come out of our colleges, should American workers coming out of our colleges, aspiring to work in engineering, be willing to work for 20 percent of the salary that is paid in this country in order to compete with an engineer from India? Those are questions we ought to start asking in this country.

Everybody says we need to train more engineers and scientists. That is true but not if their first job and their last job is to train their successor who is an engineer in India making one-fifth the salary.

So I went further than talking about Colombia, except to say this: This is not new. We in this Congress have been for so long a catcher's mitt of bad trade agreements from Presidents--for years and years and years--and this trade agreement is the model of NAFTA. It is the same old thing. There are a couple labor provisions and environmental provisions in it, but it is largely the same old strategy.

I just remind my colleagues what happened with Mexico. Nobody writes much about it. Nobody speaks much about it. But we did a trade agreement with Mexico. We had all of these claims, all of these boosts, all of these suggestions of what was going to happen. We had a $1.5 billion surplus with Mexico in our trade relationship; in other words, it was about balanced. Now it is a $74 billion United States trade deficit with Mexico. We end up, some years later, borrowing money from the Mexicans, even as we ship our jobs across the line. That is a trade strategy that I think is bankrupt for our country.

My hope is the U.S. House, which likely will deal with this first, will make short work of it and simply send a message. The message to the President is simple: This country stands for trade. Yankee ingenuity and shrewd Yankee business stand for trade. It is in our blood. But we also stand for fairness, and at last--at long last--this country will begin to write fair trade agreements with other countries that stand up for our country's economic interests as well. Yes, we want to pull up others, but we will not any longer allow trade agreements that push down this country's standards. That has been the case for too long.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I have often over the years reminded my colleagues of a verse of a song of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys from the 1930s. The verse in the song from the 1930s by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was:

The little guy picks the cotton, but the big guy gets the

money. The little bee sucks the blossom, and the big bee gets

the honey.

Never is that more evident in almost every decade than it is evident today, at this point, in this decade, with what is happening in Washington, DC.

Some big economic interests get a headache, the Federal Reserve and the Government rush with a pillow and aspirin to see if they can put them to bed, help them out, give them some comfort. Sure enough, we are now told for the stability of the financial system, a big investment bank has to be bailed out. We will assume $29 billion worth of risk for the American taxpayer, and another investment bank will be able to buy the investment bank that is failing for about $1.2 billion. So J.P. Morgan will buy Bear Stearns, it will cost them $1.2 billion, and the American taxpayers will offer $29 billion as a backstop to at least what is in some cases bad commercial paper by the investment bank that was failing.

I do not come to the floor suggesting we should do nothing, and I do not even know whether what the Fed has done is the right thing. All I know is if ``too big to fail'' really means too big to fail, not just for banks but for investment banks that are unregulated, or for hedge funds that are unregulated, if they are then ``too big to fail'' how about having some regulators look over their shoulder to see what they are doing.

If the American taxpayer is going to have to bail out their mistakes, how about let's have some regulators take a look at what is going on in some of these organizations.

Now, I want to give a little history before I talk about the bill on the Senate floor, which I support. I want to talk about a little history of where we are. I am not going to talk about the excessive speculation of the price of oil that now has the price of oil $20 or $30 a barrel over where it ought to be--that is, hedge funds and investment banks, an orgy of speculation in the oil futures market. I am not going to talk about that. I am not going to talk about our trade deficit that is $2 billion a day, every single day, $800 billion a year at this point. I am not going to talk about how much we have to borrow in budget policy. That is $800 billion in the coming year--combined, by the way, that $800 billion. That is $1.6 trillion on a $14 trillion economy in a single year. It does not take a genius to take a look at this country and see that this administration's fiscal policy and trade policy is way off track and dangerous to this country.

But I am going to talk about the subprime loan scandal and about the decision that we are not going to regulate anything. Now I know regulation is a four-letter word to some. But let me describe what the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said in 2001 when he came in. He announced that it was going to be a new day at this Federal agency, at the SEC. It was going to be ``a business-friendly place.''

So we have regulatory agencies that are supposed to be wearing striped shirts. They are the referees. They announce: Look, it is a different day. It is going to be business friendly around here.

Well, it sure was business friendly. And look at what is going to happen to the American taxpayer as a result of what was going on. I want to recite a few things of what has happened. We are talking about legislation that results from the subprime loan scandal.

Most people would not know a subprime loan from any other term. I mean, that sounds like foreign language, subprime loan. All of a sudden now it is in our lexicon. We understand it is a scandal.

Let me describe part of what it is. Home ownership is part of the American dream. I mean it is what people aspire to become, homeowners. And we understand, and we have also understood, people cannot lay out the cash for the home they want to buy. As a result, we have had a home mortgage system in this country. It has worked pretty well.

It used to be kind of a sleepy industry, kind of quiet. It was an industry where when you needed to buy a home, you needed to borrow money because you did not have the cash for it, so you went to a savings and loan, a lending institution. You sat across from someone who was wearing a gray suit and a nice white shirt and maybe a red tie. They were very understated. They knew their stuff.

They said: Look, let's figure out whether you can afford this home. Tell us what your income is. We will go through all of the numbers and see if you can afford this home. They were very careful on both sides to determine is this a home you should buy. Then they got the mortgage and put them in the home. They made monthly payments and realized the American dream.

The reason the housing industry and home ownership is so important, is that it is a barometer of this country's economic health. It is about employment, it is about putting people to work, not just building the homes but building the refrigerators and the heaters and the carpet and all the things that go into those homes as well.

Now, for many decades the home mortgage industry had a lot of good people working in it. Still does. There are a lot of good people out there today who are going to sit across the desk from somebody who wants to own a home and are going to give them a home mortgage, and they are going to abide by all of the rules. They are going to make sure the person can afford that home. There are some good people working in this industry. No question about it.

Then there are some real shysters, some real carnival barkers. I want to talk a little bit about them. Now, this industry has spawned a new breed of people in addition to the good ones I

have talked about. This was a sleepy, time-honored activity to write mortgages. All of a sudden it is like a Roman candle. Someone put some powder in it, and, boy, it has been a go-go industry.

The problem is, as I described the regulator in 2001 who took office and said: It is going to be more business friendly around here, the problem is it was too business friendly. No one was watching.

Oh, we all watched in the morning when we brushed our teeth. If you had a little television set in the bathroom as you were brushing your teeth you would see the commercial come on the television.

It would say this--this is a real one, by the way. Zoom Credit--I do not know this company, but here is what they said: Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track at Zoom Credit. At the speed of light, Zoom Credit will preapprove you for a car loan, a home loan, a credit card. Even if your credit is in the tank, Zoom Credit is like money in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit repair and debt consolidation too. Bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit--who cares. Come to Zoom Credit.

What an unbelievable business plan. Well, this would have to work in a business-friendly administration because if anybody was watching, they would say: What are you thinking about? What are you doing? That is not a business plan. That sounds like the front end of a sideshow in a carnival.

Well, Millenia Mortgage, here is what they said as you are brushing your teeth watching a little television in the morning. Here is the advertisement: 12 months, no mortgage payment. That's right. We will give you the money to make your first 12 months' payments if you call in the next 7 days. We pay it for you. Our loan program may reduce your current monthly payments by 50 percent and allow you no payments for the first 12 months.

Now, what they did not tell those folks is what you do not pay goes on the back end of the loan. It is going to cost you much more later. By the way, this reduction of 50 percent, that is a front-end teaser rate. When it resets in 3 years, you are not going to be able to pay your mortgage. I am sorry, you are not going to be able to pay it. They did not say that.

Then the largest mortgage broker in the country, Countrywide, Countrywide Financial--by the way, they went broke. Bank of America is buying Countrywide. And now some Countrywide executives are starting a new business, a new corporation, just announced in the Wall Street Journal last week, to buy distressed mortgages and resell them for a profit.

From the executives of this company, Countrywide, the largest mortgage broker said: Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders? Call us.

That is unbelievable. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Countrywide Mortgage. I do not really know them either except I have read the newspapers and read the reports.

Mr. Mozilo was the CEO of Countrywide. And in 2005, a couple of years ago, Countrywide Financial was named to Fortune magazine's prestigious Company of the Year Honor Roll. Company of the Year Honor Roll.

Mr. Mozilo, the CEO, received the Horatio Alger Award, and Barron's magazine named him as one of the world's 30 most respected chief executives. In 2006, Mr. Mozilo earned $142 million and was celebrated as the growth executive taking this high-flying mortgage lender into new heights.

Even as he was touting his company's success, he was selling $138 billion worth of his company's stock from August 2006 to 2007. He sold $248 million in stock, according to the Associated Press.

Most people don't know what this kind of carnival atmosphere was about. It gets to something I wished to talk about with respect to the legislation. Some people say: If you had a mortgage and couldn't pay for it, that is your fault. That is the victim's fault.

I understand. I believe those who have been victimized have some responsibility. But I wish to tell you about what happened. We had a new breed of mortgage brokers cold calling people who lived in their homes and had a mortgage, predatory lending with high-pressure tactics, calling them on the phone and saying: I have a better mortgage for you. You can cut your monthly house payment in half.

What they didn't tell them was this new teaser rate was going to reset at an unbelievably higher rate later, and they would have prepayment penalties in this mortgage so they couldn't get out of them. They didn't disclose that. They didn't disclose there were also going to be escrow payments on top of that. So a lot of people got duped by these carnival barkers portraying themselves as brokers to put them in a new mortgage they couldn't possibly afford. It is called subprime.

We now understand, from statistics I have seen, that 60 percent of the people who got subprime mortgages actually would have qualified for regular mortgages at much better and more desirable rates. But they were stuck in subprime. Do you think they are not victims? Let me say again, 60 percent of the people put in subprime loans shouldn't have been there. They should have gotten regular mortgages. But if you put somebody in a million dollar mortgage in subprime with a prepayment penalty and a teaser rate, a broker could get up to $25 or $30,000 in a front-end bonus for writing that mortgage. That is what was happening.

The techniques were almost unbelievable. The mortgages were not like the old days where you just go get a mortgage. Here is what Countrywide and others did. Through financial engineering, they sliced and diced a lot of new things. They said: We are going to offer something new. These are called affordability loans, adjustable rate mortgages, interest rate only loans, reduced documentation or no-doc loans. Interest-only loans, with those loans the borrower was told: You don't have to pay any principal at all. You just pay the interest. The principal, of course, goes back on the back side at a much higher rate. Then they were told there is a pay option, the adjustable rate mortgage, which allowed the borrower to pay only a portion of the interest and none of the principal. So you could pay only a portion of the interest, not even the full interest, none of the principal. Then, if you decided you would select the no doc, you had an option of not documenting all your income. You didn't have to have full documentation of the ability to pay. For that you paid a little higher rate, but you actually get a mortgage that said: You don't have to pay all your interest; you don't have to pay any principal; and you can decide that you want to get a no-documentation loan.

Does this sound like good business? It doesn't to me. Why were they offered that? High rates, high yields? Because if you package this up, if you can convince somebody through a cold call to dump their current mortgage, take a new mortgage with a teaser rate, and then you put these all together in a big old basket, mix them up like you mix sausage with hamburger, this is akin to putting sawdust in sausage, as they used to do in the old days as a filler, you put sawdust in sausage, what these financial engineers did and the mortgage banks and the hedge funds, they securitized it all. As they put these subprimes in with the other mortgages, then they would slice them up and dice them and resell them. They had a pretty decent rate on them. So this is all about profit and greed. If you have one of these securities that is backed by these new mortgages, it paid a higher rate.

That is a good thing; right? Hedge funds are buying it. Investment banks are buying it. They are all up to their necks wallowing in the corncrib similar to a bunch of hogs making a lot of money. I described yesterday how much money the executives at Bear Stearns made in bonuses in 5 years leading up to last year; hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for the top three guys. They have the money, JPMorgan and their investment bank, and the American taxpayer is on the hook for $29 billion worth of risk.

I don't wish to come and talk about the bill on the floor without understanding how we got here. It goes back to Harvey Pitt and what he said when this administration made him the head of the SEC. He said: This is going to be a more business-friendly place. I guess it was. I sure guess it was. Now, 7 years later, we have a Secretary of the Treasury prancing around town saying this is not a regulatory problem. This is not about a lack of regulation.

That is exactly what it is about. If you don't understand that, I am sorry, you need glasses. That is exactly what this is about.

Who sat around on their hands and allowed predatory lending to take place? Who sat around and watched these brokers make massive amounts of money? Watched Countrywide run up these mortgages where you don't have to pay all the interest, don't have to pay any of the principal? Who sat by and watched that happen? Does anybody think there are not victims out there? Of course, there are. But does anybody think there aren't a lot of winners? You bet your life there are a lot of winners. They made a massive amount of money, and now the American taxpayer is being told: You are going to have to provide the backstop because these companies are too big to fail.

If investment banks and hedge funds and others that were wallowing in this corncrib grunting and shoving, if they were too big to fail, then, in my judgment, they have a responsibility to accept regulatory standards by those in the Federal Government who are responsible to make sure the American taxpayer is protected.

I have been on this floor now for 4 years or so talking about the need to regulate hedge funds. Hedge funds are only about a $1.2 to $1.5 trillion value. But they are responsible for one-half of all the trades on the New York Stock Exchange every day. Think about that. Think of the impact they have. We are now securitizing everything. All these financial engineers are creating all this dark money that is not transparent to anybody, moving back and forth. They are all making money. Mr. Mozilo, head of Countrywide, made a massive amount of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, was feted as a genius. I noticed the other day he and the No. 2 person at Countrywide, as a result of this acquisition, the two of them get $19 million as a part of the acquisition by Bank of America.

So is it a case where the good bee sucks the blossom and the big bee gets the honey? It looks that way to me. The good little guy picks the cotton; the big guy gets the money. The question is, What do we do?

This administration, for 7 years now, has said: We don't need to regulate. We don't need to look over anybody's shoulder.

You would have thought we would have learned that with Enron. I chaired the hearings where Ken Lay came to the Senate and took the fifth amendment in front of the Commerce Committee. I chaired those hearings. I would have thought perhaps we would have learned something, that the administration would have learned something about the need for effective regulation. With Enron, the top folks got rich as well. They made a lot of money. Guess what. All the rest of the families who invested in that stock at the advice of the chairman who was dumping his at the same time, all those families ended up with nothing. You would have thought we would have learned something.

Let's learn something from this. The legislation on the floor today is a piece of legislation I strongly support. It is not all that we have to do, but at least it is a step we have to take now. I commend Senator Reid and others, Senator Dodd, many others who have worked on this legislation. It will not wave a wand and fix everything, but at least it begins to answer the question: If we are willing, if the Congress and the Federal Reserve Board and the administration are so anxious to promote financial stability by saying those that have been unregulated are still going to be too big to fail and the American taxpayer must ante up the money for the risk, if we are going to do that, why would we turn a blind eye to so many victims who now are losing their homes? It is estimated, in the next couple years, we will have 5 million people who will be moved out of their homes. I am talking about 5 million. All those families are going to come home someday and find out: We can't live here anymore because we are being evicted. The question is, Can we help some of them?

One of my concerns has been, I don't want the American taxpayer to be required to help somebody who saw this big old housing bubble begin to develop and decided, I am going to ride the top of that bubble. I want to invest in some things and flip it every 6 months, make a bunch of money. It is not in my interest to say the American taxpayer should finance that speculation. If they made those judgments and were wrong, I am sorry, that is a penalty they have to pay. But those folks who live in their residence and were victims of predatory lending, those folks who got bad mortgages, whose terms were not disclosed--and we have had testimony before the Commerce Committee about this, that the materials given to some of the homeowners never even disclosed what the reset interest would be, at least in language that could be understood by the average homeowner, did not even disclose there was going to be an escrow payment on top so, when the reset occurs in 3 years, you go from a mortgage payment you can easily handle to a mortgage payment there isn't anyway you could make, that family then is out of luck. I think for purposes of stability and for purposes of fairness we ought to reach out and provide some assistance. That is what this piece of legislation does. As I indicated, the legislation applies only to owner-occupied primary residents. They are the only ones who would be eligible. It has five principles and those five principles are sound. Long-term affordability, we are trying to create some new equity for troubled homeowners. The new loans will be based on the family's ability to repay. That will provide some stability for sustainable home ownership. This is not an investor or lender bailout. We are not bailing out investors or lenders. What we are doing is helping those who are in the home, only owner-occupied homes. There is no windfall for borrowers. The borrowers will share their new equity and future growth appreciation equally with the FHA. It will, I think, do something to provide some stability and some confidence and some liquidity and some transparency in the credit markets, which is very important.

I have spoken longer than I intended, but I did wish to give some background to why we find ourselves in this position. We should not be here. I don't know anybody here who thinks it is smart for a company that decides it is going to advertise, if you have bad credit, if you have been bankrupt, you can't make your payment, come to us, we want to loan you money. That is a business plan? Not where I come from. Yet that is what has been going on. It has been akin to a carnival.

Now all this inept business practice comes crashing down, and guess who gets hurt. The American taxpayer and the homeowners. The question is, What can Congress do? We know what the Federal Reserve Board has done. The Federal Reserve Board has responded with cuts in their interest rates. They have a couple different interest rates that they apply, and they have been cutting those interest rates.

One of my major concerns is the Federal Reserve Board and the Secretary of the Treasury misunderstand a portion of what has caused this critical area that we are in. Yes, the subprime loan scandal was the fuse. When that fuse was lit, the explosion occurred. Yes, that is the case. But it is also the case that the electronic herd in this world, the currency traders, those who take a look at what are the fundamentals, what is the foundation of the economy of a country, they look at this country, and they see an economy that is desperately off track. They see an administration that decided long ago we are going to fight a war, and we will not pay for it. We intend to fight a war, and we will send the soldiers overseas. They can strap on ceramic body armor in the morning and be shot at in the afternoon. But we will not ask the American people to pay a penny for it. Two-thirds of a trillion have been added on top of the debt by this President, all of it requested as emergency funding. Two-thirds of a trillion, and we are told as of yesterday he is going to ask for another $100 billion. We are going to have to borrow in budget policy $800 billion in this coming year.

On top of that, we have the highest trade deficit in the history of the country. I have written a book about that issue. It is the highest trade deficit; $2 billion a day we import more than we export. Currency traders look at that. They look at the budget problem. They look at the trade problem, and they say: That doesn't add up. That can't be sustained.

Warren Buffett has always said: Every bubble is always destined to burst; the question is when. The housing bubble burst. Probably not surprising. But he has also said this fiscal policy and this trade policy is not sustainable. I use him as a quote because I have a lot of respect for Warren Buffett. He analyzes pretty well what is going on. We have a responsibility to do what is right. On fiscal policy, if we are going to spend money, we have to pay for it. If that is difficult, if it is tough to ask the American people to do that, maybe then we shouldn't spend it. If it is important to spend it, then maybe we have a responsibility to say to the American people: Here is why. Here is why it is important for the future of this country.

My hope is we will pass the HOPE for Homeowners Act of 2008 as a first step--just as a first step. I think there is a lot to commend it. But there is so much more to do.

The book that McCullough wrote about John Adams was a fascinating book, going all the way back to the start of this country.

John Adams, as they were trying to put this new country together, traveled a lot. He traveled to Europe and elsewhere, representing this new set of colonies trying to put a nation together. He would write home to his wife Abigail. As McCullough has chronicled, in the letters to Abigail Adams, John Adams would lament. He would say: Where will the leadership come from to start this new country? Where will we find the leadership? Who will be the leaders? And then he would lament: There is only us--Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, me. Well, in the rearview mirror of history, the ``only us'' represented some of the greatest human talent gathered on this planet.

But I think every generation of Americans has a right to ask and an incentive to ask the same question: Where is the leadership? Who will be the leaders to steer this country and put this country on track for the future? That is an important question now.

We answer a question with a piece of legislation today. I hope we will move to this and move rather quickly to pass this legislation. But it is just a portion of the question the American people have a right to ask: Where will the leadership come from? Who will be the leaders to put this country back on track?

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on May 1, 2008, Bob Valeu ends his service to the U.S. Senate.

For 16 years, Bob Valeu has done an outstanding job as the director of my North Dakota Senate offices. His passion for public policy, his dedication to our State and country, and his commitment to excellence have been a hallmark of his service these past years.

Those of us who serve as Senators get attention for the work we do. But we understand that very often that attention and our accomplishments are a result of some very talented and dedicated staff who work with us to advance the interests of our State and our country. That is certainly the case with Bob Valeu's service to me and to the Senate.

Whenever an event ended, the lights were turned down, the microphone was turned off, and I had moved on to another event, Bob Valeu was usually still there solving problems and working with people to address their needs. He was that kind of State director--the type every Senator aspires to have.

Bob and I have traveled tens of thousands of miles together to every nook and cranny of our State. We have been to every kind of event imaginable: high school convocations, Main Street tours, ribbon cuttings, university commencements, lutefisk dinners, State fairs, karaoke competitions, and chili cookoffs. But beyond all of that--and even more importantly--Bob Valeu had provided wise counsel and advice over the years. And I know that even as he leaves my official staff, he will continue to be a valuable advisor and a good friend.

So I want to use this opportunity to publicly thank my friend and a very dedicated American with whom I have been privileged to serve these past 16 years.

To Bob and his wife Marge and their entire family, on behalf of the Senate, I tell you that our country is a better place because of your service. And this Senator is deeply appreciative of the many years of excellence you dedicated to the best interests of our great Nation.

Will the Senator yield?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized to speak for 30 minutes in morning business following the presentation of the Senator from Georgia.

Mr. President, I congratulate my friend, the Senator from Georgia, on his new grandson. We all hope this country continues to hold the promise it has held for so many decades now for all American children.

Mr. President, I have come today to talk a bit about the economy and where we find ourselves. This week we are going to talk about housing.

The effort we have made in the Senate in the majority party to pass emergency housing legislation is very important. I want to put up some charts that show what was happening in this country with respect to housing and what was happening at least to begin to cause the partial collapse we have seen.

This is an advertisement by a company called Millennia Mortgage. Here is what it said to the American people. I don't know this company, but they said:

Twelve months, no mortgage payment. That's right. We will

give you the money to make your first 12 payments if you call

in the next 7 days. We pay it for you. . . . Our loan program

may reduce your current monthly payment by as much as 50

percent and allow you no payments for the first 12 months.

Call us today.

Millennia Mortgage. Come over here and get a mortgage from us. You don't have to make a payment for 12 months, they said.

Here is a company appropriately named. I don't know this company either--Zoom Credit. They told the American people:

Credit approval is just seconds away. Get on the fast track

at Zoom Credit. At the speed of light, Zoom Credit will

preapprove you for a car loan, a home loan, or a credit card.

Even if your credit's in the tank. Zoom Credit is like money

in the bank. Zoom Credit specializes in credit repair, debt

consolidation, too, bankruptcy, slow credit, no credit--who

cares?

That is what Zoom Credit had to say to the American people.

Then Countrywide, the country's largest mortgage lender, said:

Do you have less than perfect credit? Do you have late

mortgage payments? Have you been denied by other lenders?

Call us . . .

Just call us; that is not a problem. If you are a bad risk, you don't pay your bills, call us. This from the largest mortgage lender in this country.

And then we wonder what happened? What could have caused all of this economic trouble? Everyone understands this does not work. Mortgage revenue companies advertising: Come to us if you have bad credit; let us give you a loan of some type. And by the way, the same companies, in many cases, applied what is called predatory lending--high-pressure, cold-call telephone sales to people who say: I know you have a mortgage, but we will give you a different mortgage. We will give you one with a 2-percent interest rate, not telling them it will reset to 7 percent or 9 percent or, in some cases, more with prepayment penalties. And the broker who was able to convince someone to do that got a big fat bonus. The mortgage company, well, they got mortgages with big interest rates once they reset, and prepayment penalties so the people could not get out of them. Then what they were able to do was slice them up and put them into--like they did in the old days, like they would pack sawdust into sausages for filler--they would take good mortgages, bad mortgages, subprime, potentially bad, put them all together, slice them up, dice them, and ship them off to a hedge fund that buys them--in some cases the mortgage banks had their own mortgage sides to purchase these securitized investments--and no one knew what was in them. Very much like sausage, I might say. Nobody knew what was there.

Now all of a sudden, they have all of this paper out there and we have about 7.2 million families with what are called subprime mortgages, an outstanding value of $1.3 trillion. It is estimated that 2 million families will lose their homes in the next 2 years. By the way, 2 million families, that is 5.4 million people who will be affected by the loss of their home in the next couple of years.

We put together legislation to try to address this issue in the Senate, and we have had great difficulty moving it. We hope in the next day or so we will at least be able to get a motion to proceed.

It is interesting, when we are talking about trying to help some people avoid losing their homes, they say: Well, we don't want to help folks such as that. I agree that those who were buying houses for the sake of flipping them, making a bunch of money in the bubble of housing prices, I am not interested very much in them, but I am very interested in someone who was a victim of predatory lending by a bunch of folks who were getting rich, making a lot of money and those folks are now threatened with losing their house. I am very interested in seeing if we can help them a bit.

It is interesting, the big folks always get help. The Federal Reserve Board and the administration, with Treasury Secretary Paulson, have rushed in. They arranged for JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns, a big old investment bank. Bear Stearns was worth about $20 billion a couple of months ago. It was acquired by JP Morgan for $1.3 billion in the last couple of weeks and the Federal Government, through the Federal Reserve Board, will put up $29 billion to pick up the risks on the assets. Think of that. One investment bank gets a $1.3 billion acquisition of another investment bank that was worth $20 billion a couple of weeks ago, and the Federal taxpayers come in to provide $29 billion as a safety net for the risk JP Morgan assumes.

On top of that, the Fed comes in and says for the first time since the Great Depression that they will make direct loans to investment banks. They have previously made loans to depository banks over which they have regulatory control, but now they will make direct loans to investment banks.

In addition, they will make a $200 billion loan available to Wall Street bond dealers. It is kind of a form of no-fault capitalism.

I don't know whether the Fed and the Bush administration are doing the right thing. I don't know. I know we cannot, none of us--the administration or the Fed or the Congress--decide to do nothing. We are trying to decide on behalf of families who are about to lose homes to see if we can't do something to give them some help. Obviously, a lot of help has been extended to the Wall Street interests--a lot of help, $30 billion, $200 billion, direct lending to investment banks. That is a lot of help. But when it comes to the homeowners, well, not so fast; let's worry about that, they say.

The Secretary of the Treasury has made the point that the problem has

not been the lack of regulation. That has exactly been the problem, lack of regulation. We must have some kind of regulatory authority to look over the shoulder and watch and see what is happening. But the fact is there has been no regulation.

The fact is the Federal Reserve Board in the Greenspan era, more recently Bernanke, and the Bush administration have watched while all of these financial engineers have created the most sophisticated of securities and devices. The financial engineers created things such as derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, called CDOs, credit default swaps--$23 trillion of notional values out there in credit default swaps--loan syndications, securitization, off-the-balance-sheet debt vehicles. It is unbelievable what has been going on, all in the name of financial engineering, and while the economy was going up, everybody thought they were all geniuses. And now as it is collapsing like a house of cards, the Federal Reserve and the head of the Treasury Department rush to try to help the big interests. The question is, what about the rest of the folks who are getting hurt? There are a lot of them. What about the rest?

I mentioned Bear Stearns was about to go belly up and the Fed and the Treasury Department assessed that could not happen because it would affect the entire financial system. I don't know whether they are right. I know it has become a kind of no-fault capitalism when the investment banks can take very big risks, and then when it comes time that it does not work out, the taxpayers come in and say: Don't worry, we will put up a safety net.

About 16 months ago, Bear Stearns gave the chairman of Bear Stearns, James Cayne, a stock bonus of $14.8 million. The year before, he had gotten $30.3 million in compensation. This company that went belly up over the last 5 years, the chairman, Mr. Cayne, made $156 million in income. Let me say that again. This is a company that went belly up because it took risks that were way outside the norm, in my judgment. The chairman received $156 million between 2002 and 2006. The CEO, Alan Schwartz, received $141 million in income during that same period, and the former company president, Warren Spector, $168 million.

Let me say that again. Three top officials at Bear Stearns, 15, 16 months ago received very large bonuses, and in the last 5 years received the following compensations: $156 million, $141 million, and $168 million. This is like hogs in a trough, all except for the grunting and shoving, which we cannot yet hear, but we will, I assume. It is unbelievable. There is unbelievable greed in this system.

We are told again by the Secretary of the Treasury that this was not the fault of a lack of regulation. Of course, it was the fault of no regulation.

This is from the Wall Street Journal, March 2008:

A year ago at a Honolulu hotel, the heads of three Federal

regulatory agencies charged with guarding the soundness of

America's banks delivered this message: We're the ones you

want regulating you.

Essentially telling them, we are going to compete for lax regulations. It doesn't matter what you do, we are not going to watch very much because we believe in deregulation.

So we have an unbelievable amount of hedge fund activity that did not use to exist in this country. It is now completely deregulated--hedge funds involved in derivatives way behind the curtain, and nobody knows what is going on; mortgage companies advertising that you ought to get a mortgage from them if you have bad credit because they wish to give you a mortgage, and then they slice it up in securities and send it around the world and no one knows what is in these securities. All of a sudden that piece of sausage explodes and we wonder why? It exploded because it never made good business sense, and now the American taxpayers are going to bail them all out.

We cannot begin to address this problem unless we understand that when the big interests are going to make hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars as a result of almost unprecedented greed, there needs to be some regulation. That is a fact. Regulation is not a four- letter word. It is an essential part of good government.

Long ago, I and others have been on the floor of the Senate talking about need for some regulation with respect to hedge funds, but we have not been able to get legislation through the Congress. But this is not just about regulating hedge funds; it is about the agencies that are already empowered to regulate refusing to do their jobs.

The Secretary of the Treasury today announced a series of steps that he portrays as a substantial addressing of the issues that are now involved in subprime lending and the other financial difficulties. But in many ways, it is moving the boxes around and, it appears to me to be deregulation rather than the need for additional regulation and additional oversight.

It is not just in this area of housing, it is not just in the area of investment banking or hedge funds. I have mentioned on the floor previously that there is unbelievable speculation in a range of areas. Oil--the fact is I believe, and there are some experts who believe, that the price of oil at the moment is about $30 above where it ought to be. Why? Because for the first time hedge funds and investment banks are hip deep in the oil futures market, driving up the price of oil, having nothing at all to do with the supply and demand of oil. Once again, unbelievable speculation. For what purpose? For the purpose of unbelievable profitability.

We have not had investment banks previously buying oil storage capability so they can buy oil on the futures market and take it off the market and put it in storage and wait until the price goes up. We have not had that before. That is the kind of speculation that I think is counter to the interests of this country's economy. It is not counter to the interests of those who want very large profits, even if the rest of the American people have to pay for that unbelievable speculation.

There are some who say, if we can address this issue now, the issue of housing, the issue of predatory lending, if we can address the issue of investment banks, the issues of some hedge funds, that will all be fine. That is not the case either. There are some other underlying problems that almost everyone in this world knows but no one is interested in doing anything about it. The dollar is losing value substantially for a number of reasons, but at least two of those reasons are obvious: No. 1, an $800 billion trade deficit; No. 2, the $700 billion required additional borrowing this year because of budget policy.

I know the President says the deficit is a projected $410 billion. That is not true. Take a look at what our country is going to be required to borrow in the coming years--$700 billion. You add an $800 billion trade deficit to a $700 billion borrowing requirement because of a reckless budget policy and you have $1.5 trillion borrowing in 1 year against a $14 trillion economy. People know that doesn't work.

I mean, the fact is, we have to fix this system, and we start, it seems to me, this week, with the proposition that if we can deal with the housing piece, at least you start trying to help some of the American people who really deserve some help at this point in order to keep their homes. That is the first piece of legislation on the floor of the Senate this week. That is a reasonable thing to do. If this Government, at its highest levels, can take billions and tens of billions of dollars around Wall Street and say to the Wall Street firms, here is $29 billion if you will pay $1.3 billion for a firm that used to be worth $20 billion a couple weeks ago--if we can do that and assume all that risk on behalf of the American taxpayers for the kind of activities on Wall Street that represent, in my judgment, unsound business practices and unbelievable speculation, this Congress can certainly reach out to home owners across this country to say that we want to give them some help. We will see tomorrow or the next day what might or might not happen with respect to the willingness of this Senate to address this housing issue.

Mr. President, 2 weeks ago, I had a chance to meet Herman Wouk, who is one of America's greatest authors. He wrote ``Caine Mutiny'' and he wrote ``War and Remembrance.'' He is 91 years old and a remarkable man, just a remarkable man. He was telling me something kind of in jest. He said:

You know, I don't know much about what happened after 1945, but I know everything that happened before 1945. He was talking about his body of work, his research on the Second World War and prior to that period of time. And he wrote wonderful books, as all of us know. He is one of America's greatest authors.

Herman Wouk and I were talking about the Iraq war and talking about the stories about the Iraq war, and he said to me: Do you know anything about the Truman Committee? Do you know anything about what happened in the Second World War with President Harry Truman, then-Senator Harry Truman, who created a committee, a special committee in the United States Senate, bipartisan, to go after this issue of contract fraud that was going on with respect to defense contracting? I told him I certainly did know about the Truman committee, and we have had, I believe, four votes in the Senate that I offered as amendments to establish a Truman committee.

At this point I want to show my colleagues a photograph of a man. I don't know this man personally. This comes from a Thursday, March 27, edition of the New York Times.

I read an article about this man on an airplane, and I was struck by it because it is such an unbelievable story, and it is another chapter of, in my judgment, a shameful series of chapters of abuse of the American people by contractors with respect to the Iraq war.

The New York Times published this article, and this is a picture of a 22-year-old man from Miami Beach. He had gotten contracts worth over $300 million in U.S. taxpayers' dollars, and he had signed a contract with the U.S. Army to provide arms to Afghan soldiers.

Apparently, we, as taxpayers, and the U.S. Army, were trying to provide additional arms for the Afghan Army with which to fight and defend itself. So this 22-year-old man got a $300 million contract from the Army Sustainment Command, through a company that had been a shell for a number of years established by this man's father. Mr. Diveroli is his name. This is a mug shot from the Miami Dade Police Department. He had allegedly assaulted a parking lot attendant and had a forged driver's license when he was arrested, which made him out to be 4 years older than he really was. He told police he had gotten the forged driver's license to buy alcohol, but now that he was over 21 he didn't need it any longer.

So this is a 22-year-old man who was the CEO of a company called AEY based in Miami Beach. And this is a picture of the building that was headquarters for his company, but there was nothing on any door in the building. Apparently, in one part of this building an office was supposed to be his office, but there was nothing that identified his office.

And here is a picture of his vice president, the vice president of this company, this company to which the U.S. Army gave a $300 million contract. The vice president is a 25-year-old masseur named David Packouz. He is the former vice president of the firm that got $300 million. So you have a 22-year-old and a 25-year-old masseur who get $300 million from the U.S. Army.

Now, what did they do with the $300 million? Well, the next photograph, again from the New York Times, shows outdated ammunition sold to Afghan forces, including 40-year-old Chinese-made cartridges. So these folks got $300 million and they were providing mid-1960s cartridges to the Afghan Army, which the Afghan Army was receiving in cardboard boxes that had not been properly taped and were falling apart. The Afghan Army described these armaments as junk. Here is an Afghan policeman surveying 42-year-old Chinese ammunition that arrived in crumbling boxes.

Again, American taxpayers, through the Army Sustainment Command, paid hundreds of millions of dollars to a company that previously had been a shell company, a shell corporation, now run by a 22-year-old who says that he is the only employee of the corporation.

Now, Mr. President, I have spent a lot of time on the floor of the Senate on these kinds of issues. It is pretty unbelievable when you think about it. I don't know Mr. Diveroli personally. Never met him. I do know that three reporters from the New York Times did some extraordinary work--C.J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt, and Nicholas Wood, to expose his activities. I don't know how long it took them to do this investigative piece, but it is two full pages inside the New York Times. They obviously traveled to Afghanistan and other countries to finish this investigative piece. We wouldn't know about this issue were it not for investigative reports by the New York Times.

In January of 2007, that is just 14 months ago, the most recent award, which I believe was $150 million, was given by the Army Sustainment Command, and the Army Sustainment Command said:

AEY's proposal represented the best value to the

government.

I am telling you, this part of the U.S. Army has a lot of explaining to do to this Congress and to the American people. This is the same Army Sustainment Command and, incidentally, the same general in charge of the Army Sustainment Command who went to a hearing here in the Senate, and following my testimony before a hearing about the water problems in Iraq and about Halliburton Corporation providing water to the troops, nonpotable water that was twice as contaminated as raw water from the Euphrates River, we had the evidence, internal Halliburton memorandums, saying it was a near miss. It could have caused mass sickness or death. This is the same general who went to that Senate committee and said: Never happened.

Well, now the inspector general has finished an investigation and said in fact it did happen. It did happen. This general has some explaining to do.

I have asked Secretary Gates, the Defense Secretary, to ask this general to explain himself, and so should this Congress.

But I don't understand, I just don't understand how even following information sent to this country, to the Army Sustainment Command by U.S. military officers in Afghanistan, saying what they are sending over here in the form of armaments under this contract is junk and it needs to stop, even following that it continued. It is an unbelievable amount of government waste.

This is but one issue. And we wouldn't know about it if it were not for the New York Times. This has been going on for years. We have been fighting in Iraq longer than we were fighting in the Second World War.

Now, let me go back to something they did in the Second World War. Harry Truman, in this Chamber, stood up and offered a proposal to create the Truman Committee, bipartisan. For $15,000, they created a committee, and it worked for 7 years and saved $15 billion investigating waste, fraud, and abuse in defense spending during the Second World War. Now, Mr. President, I have been trying for 4 years to get this Congress to empower a committee and to impanel a bipartisan committee to go after this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse.

Let me go over just a few of the things. I have held, I believe, about 12 hearings in the Policy Committee, but the Democratic Policy Committee does not have subpoena power, and I have only held these hearings because other committees have not. Oversight is a responsibility of this Congress.

Mr. President, I want to show a photograph of Bunnatine Greenhouse. I have done it on many occasions. But the reason I wanted to show the photograph is because Bunnatine Greenhouse is a very courageous woman. This woman rose to become the highest civilian official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. This is a remarkable woman. By all accounts, according to people outside of government, she was the finest purchasing agent and an unbelievable public servant. But she blew the whistle on abusive Halliburton contracts. She said it was the most significant abuse of contracting authority she had seen in her career.

Guess what happened to her. It is what happens to too many whistleblowers. She got demoted and lost her job. She got demoted because she had the guts to speak out.

This whole issue has now been subsumed behind the wall in the Defense Department. We can't talk about it now because it is under investigation. This woman lost her job nearly 4 years

ago and was replaced, by the way, by someone who had no experience, not a day's worth of experience in contracting authority. That is the way it works over there. You blow the whistle, you pay for it with your career.

I called the person that hired Bunnatine Greenhouse one night at his home--LTG Joe Ballard. He had since retired from the military. And I said: General Ballard, Bunnatine Greenhouse spoke out about the billions of dollars given the Halliburton Corporation and the abuse and the way those contracts were let and she was demoted. Tell me about Bunnatine Greenhouse. You hired her.

He said: She is the best. She got a raw deal.

This is from General Ballard, since retired. Well, the Pentagon decided to award a big no-bid, sole-source contract to the Halliburton Corporation. It is called Restore Iraqi Oil, the RIO-C, and then they had other contracts--the LOGCAP contract. The waivers that were required were not given. This was short-circuited, and we have seen the result of this now for a long period of time.

Mr. President, I have been to the floor a good many times to talk about the hearings I have held, and I don't mean to single out Halliburton, it is just the company that has gotten the biggest contracts. But when a company gets hundreds of millions of dollars, or billions of dollars and then, in my judgment, is not performing and is taking all the money, we have a right to ask questions. We had $85,000 brand new trucks left beside the road in a zone that was not considered hostile at all, to be torched and set on fire because they didn't have enough equipment, or didn't have a wrench to fix a tire; $85,000 brand new trucks left to be torched beside the road in safe areas because they had a plugged fuel tank. The attitude is that it doesn't matter, the taxpayers will pay for that. It doesn't matter, it is a cost-plus contract. A cost-plus contract, taxpayers will pay for that.

Let me show a towel. It is sometimes the smallest issues that make the biggest points. Henry Bunting came and testified for the Halliburton Corporation. He worked in Kuwait. He was the purchasing agent for our troops in Iraq.

One of his jobs was to purchase towels, so he wrote out a purchase order for towels for the troops and his supervisor looked at that and said no, you can't buy those towels. Bunting wanted to buy plain white towels. He was told that he needed to buy a towel that has KBR's logo, Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, embroidered on it. He said the problem is that will triple the cost of the towels they are buying for the troops. His supervisor said you don't understand, it doesn't matter. These are cost-plus contracts. It doesn't matter.

Henry Bunting told us about tripling or quadrupling the cost of towels, about paying $45 for a case of Coca-Cola, about $7,600 for a 1- month lease of an SUV, about 25 tons of nails sitting on the ground, on the sand of Iraq, because somebody ordered 50,000 pounds of nails and ordered them too short. It doesn't matter, the taxpayer pays for all that. Throw them on the sand and reorder.

How about charging for 42,000 meals for the soldiers, a day, and serving only 14,000 meals a day? Missing, 28,000 meals. It doesn't look like an innocent mistake to me. Rory Mayberry came to testify at a hearing I held. He was a supervisor of food service for the Halliburton subsidiary. He said we were told that when an auditor came by, don't you dare talk to an auditor. We forbid you to speak to a government auditor. He said they were routinely charging for more food for soldiers than solders existed--routinely. He said they were routinely serving expired, date-stamped food. The supervisor said it doesn't matter, serve it to the troops.

I mentioned the issue of water quality; again, the issue of requirement in the contract to provide water to our troops at the military bases in Iraq. That was a Halliburton contract. A couple of whistleblowers came to me and gave me the internal memorandum in the company. They were providing water that was twice as contaminated as raw water from the Euphrates River. I had it in writing. Yet Halliburton denied it and so did the U.S. Army. Only when the inspector general did the investigation I requested did we find out Halliburton was not telling the truth, nor was the U.S. Army. That is a sad comment.

I want to show a picture of some money. The fellow who was holding this cash came to testify. I believe I have a chart that shows the money. These are one-hundred dollar bills, in bricks, wrapped with Saran Wrap. This guy, named Frank--this was in a building in Baghdad. Down below in the vault of that building were several billion dollars.

By the way, $18 billion of cash was loaded on C-130s, from this country, to go to Iraq--$18 billion in cash. It was not accounted for.

There was a man who was contracted to be able to do the accounting. His name was Howell. His address was a residential home in San Diego, CA, and his company allegedly was NorthStar Consulting. No one has ever been able to find anything NorthStar Consulting did, except we know they got $1.4 million and there is no evidence they had any accounting on staff, any accountant at all. There is no evidence that any of the $18 billion in cash that was moved by C-130 airplanes to Iraq was accounted for.

This is $2 million. This $2 million.

By the way, Frank said from time to time they would throw these around as footballs in the office because there was a lot of cash around there. He said the refrain in their office was: You bring a bag because we pay in cash. He said it was like the Wild West.

This belonged to Custer Battles, by the way, this cash. They showed up in Iraq with no experience, a new company. They got $100 million in new contracts very quickly and then a whistleblower--at least the whistleblower says they threatened to kill him. He said you can't do this. They took forklift trucks that belonged to the Baghdad Airport, allegedly painted them blue, and then sold them back to the Coalition Provisional Authority. That was us, by the way. We were paying for all of that. Custer Battles, this was one of their payments. I expect they have been under criminal investigation now for some while--and if they have not, they should be. That was only $2 million, but they got $100 million.

There is so much to say about these issues. The Parsons Corporation is a company that was to build health clinics in Iraq. The Parsons Corporation was provided $243 million in a contract by us to build or repair 142 health clinics in the country of Iraq. Three years later the $200 million was gone, but there were only 20 health clinics and those that existed were of shoddy construction. A man who was an Iraqi physician, a doctor, came and talked to me about it. He said he went to the Iraqi health minister because he knew this money was supposed to go to address health issues in Iraq. He said to the Iraqi health minister, I understand an American company got $200-plus million. I want to tour all these healthcare facilities that were supposed to be built. The Iraqi health minister said you don't understand. Many of these were imaginary clinics.

The money is gone. The American taxpayer got fleeced again. The money is all gone, but the clinics don't exist.

We have shoveled money out the door here in this Congress. This President has said I want to send soldiers to war but I do not intend to pay for it. Not a cent of it has been paid for. Since the war started, every single dollar has been requested as an emergency by the President, emergency spending. It is unbelievable; nearly two-thirds of a trillion dollars emergency spending. A substantial amount of money has been shoveled out the door here for contracting, very big contracts in Iraq--some reconstruction, some replenishment of military accounts, but very large contracts with almost no oversight. The American taxpayer has been stolen blind. This is easy to say, in my judgment, the largest amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in the history of this country.

It has gone on for over 5 years. There is no excuse, none, for this Congress not creating a Truman committee with subpoena power, bipartisan, to investigate and bring justice and provide the oversight necessary on this kind of contract abuse. There is no excuse.

I know some over the years have made excuses. I have offered the amendment three times, perhaps four, but we voted on it three times. I have people stand up in the Senate and say

we are doing the oversight hearings, we are doing hearings. We are not. That is not true. The Appropriations Committee did one a month ago after I pushed and pushed. I appreciate the Appropriations Committee doing it. We will do another one in about a month, a little less than a month. That is fine. That is not a substitute for doing 60 hearings a year for 7 years, as the Truman committee did.

American taxpayers deserve better than they have gotten from this President and from the Congress for the last 5 years.

Senator Reid and I have talked about this a great deal. Senator Reid has aggressively supported the creation of a special committee, a bipartisan committee to investigate this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse. It is long past the time we do it.

I come back to the point I made originally. When I pick up a New York Times and see that $300 million of contracts is given to a shell corporation in Miami, FL, with no name on the door of the building, a corporation headed by a 22-year-old as president, a 26-year-old masseur as vice president, I ask the question: Who makes those judgments? Who is responsible? Who is accountable?

From that several hundred million dollars, 50-year-old weaponry is sent to Afghanistan in the name of American taxpayers, in boxes that are not taped up properly, weaponry that comes, in some cases, from the 1960s, in China.

That is unbelievable to me. Some might be able to read the New York Times piece and say that is all right, I have read this before. I have read we were double charged for gasoline for our American troops in Iraq. I have read we were overcharged for meals. I read we paid for health clinics that did not get built. I read all these things. You know what, it is not such a big deal.

It is a big deal with me. It ought to be a big deal with this Congress. The American people, I think, are sick and tired of this and they deserve a Congress that is going to do something about it.

I obviously wish I didn't have to come to the floor to talk about this. I wish instead my energy was devoted to a committee that had subpoena power. The very first thing we should do--and, by the way, I am writing a letter to the appropriate subcommittee saying I want you to subpoena the principals in this contract and I want you to subpoena the general in charge of the Army Sustainment Command and I want them to come to testify and explain to the American people and explain to us how is it during wartime that we seem to blink and turn our head to what is, I believe, war profiteering. Who has allowed us be that immune to the interests of the American troops? This undermines and disserves the American soldiers. It certainly disserves the American taxpayers and does not represent the best interests of this country.

In the coming days I intend to come to the floor a good many times to speak about this and be a general burr under the saddle--which is a term that people are perhaps more acquainted with in my home State because we raise a lot of horses. But it seems to me the only way to get this sort of thing done is to be a problem and to embarrass those who do not want to do it, and I am prepared to do that. I think it is long past the time to say to the American people: You don't have to read it anymore in the newspaper. The newspaper is not going to be required to do oversight for this Congress. The Congress finally, at long last, will do its own oversight and will do a good job and tell the American people you can count on us. That has not been the case earlier when this war started because no one wanted to do the necessary kind of oversight because it was the kind of oversight that would probably raise some hackles and embarrass some folks.

I might also say, there was a piece of legislation passed--in fact, the Presiding Officer, Senator Webb, and Senator McCaskill and others put it together last year, which I supported--which deals with a Truman commission. It is not the equivalent of a Truman committee. A Truman committee is a standing committee with subpoena power, but the Truman Commission is a step forward and I supported it. It will be a commission that operates on a one-time basis to develop recommendations and take a look at what is happening.

The Wartime Contracting Commission has a 2-year sunset, and I commend my colleagues for trying to put together and for successfully putting together a commission, but I do say that we need in this Congress a committee, a bipartisan select committee, with subpoena power and we need it now.

I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this amendment has to do with Indian health care. We have both a trust responsibility and treaty responsibilities for the health care of American Indians. They are the first Americans.

Let me tell you how we meet our responsibility. We also have a responsibility to provide health care for incarcerated Federal prisoners. We spend twice as much money for health care for our incarcerated prisoners as we do to meet our promise to American Indians for health care. This amendment provides $1 billion restoration of funding for the Indian health care program. It is paid for by a general reduction in function 920.

Let me say again, people are dying as a result of the underfunding for health care for American Indians. It is a promise we have made, and it is long past the time we keep that promise. This amendment is a step in that direction.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I move to lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. President, I would ask the chair and the ranking member, I know there are a good number of amendments on both sides that are bipartisan and noncontroversial, and my hope would be that in this break and in future breaks packages of amendments could be put together that are noncontroversial and bipartisan and move them as a block because I think there are a good many of them, and that would be very helpful.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and lay that motion on the table.

The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Amendment No. 4233

Mr. President, many of the Senators worked on this even prior to the Senator from Louisiana joining us in the Senate. I don't object to the sense of the Senate. It will have no legislative impact and it has no relationship to the budget. It is 1 o'clock in the morning, 14 hours after we started voting. And on this issue, about 30 minutes ago, the managers of the bill indicated they would approve this. Yet my colleague insists on a recorded vote. I observe this. I have fondly and affectionately pointed out that the Senate is occasionally 100 bad habits. Look, all of us have been willing to forgo recorded votes from time to time, but everybody has a right to ask for a recorded vote on anything at any point. I understand that.

Again, this is a sense of the Senate that has no legislative impact or relationship to the budget. I have no objection to it. We will vote for it. I observe again that the managers had agreed to this 30 minutes ago. I would have hoped we could have voice voted this.

Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the Senator from Kentucky and the Senator from Pennsylvania, both of whom I think are to be recognized, I be recognized for 20 minutes.

Mr. President, I ask that the request be so modified. I do want to talk to the two Senators about being able to offer the amendment about which I will speak, but I will do that at another time.

If the Senator will yield, let me ask unanimous consent that I be recognized following his completion of 10 minutes.

Mr. President, I will want to visit with Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg, the chair and ranking member, to try to determine when I will be able to offer my amendment. I wish to speak about the amendment. My understanding is I am not yet able to offer it because of an objection, but my hope is we will be able to work this amendment into the list of amendments very soon.

I have often described this budget process. One hundred years from now, we will all be dead--not a pleasant thought--but historians will look back at what we did and who we were and could evaluate a little something about us and our value systems by looking at how we spent our money. What did we think was important? What did we invest in? What did we spend our money on? That is true for families and individuals, and it is especially true for governments--what the Federal Government thinks is important. What is its value system in this budget document? It will tell historians a lot about who we were, the kind of people we were.

I want to talk about an amendment I am offering to provide funding for the Indian health care system. I am going to tell you why I am doing that. American Indians were here first. We all came later. They were the first Americans. Because we took their land, in most instances, and put them on reservations, we signed treaties with them. Our Government said to them: Here is what we are going to do. Yes, we are taking your land, but we are going to have a trust responsibility for certain things we are going to do for you, and we will even put it in treaties and sign the treaties. We are going to provide for your health care. So we have a responsibility here in the Federal Government to provide for Indian health care. If someone wondered why that is the case--we promised. We signed treaties, we signed up, we said we will do it.

So we have a couple of million American Indians in this country who rely on the Indian health care system. Guess what. We do a pretty miserable job. We spend half as much money providing health care to American Indians, per person, as we do to those who serve in Federal prisons. When we incarcerate someone in a Federal prison, we are responsible for their health care. We spend twice as much more on Federal prisoners' health care per person than we do for American Indians. We are not nearly meeting our responsibility. We are not even close to keeping our promise, and nobody seems to care very much. There are people dying as a result of it, and still nobody seems to care very much.

We passed the Indian Health Care Improvement Act on the floor of the Senate recently. I am proud of that because it has been many years since this Congress has addressed the issue of Indian health care. If the funding available for Indian health care had kept pace with inflation, here on this chart is where we would be. Instead, we are down here, dramatically underfunding the health care system for American Indians, and as a result, we have full-scale health care rationing. It ought to be a scandal. It ought to be on the front page of the Washington Post, but it is not. It is a scandal, as far as I am concerned. Health care rationing? That is unbelievable to me.

Let me describe this health care rationing, if I might. My colleagues have heard me speak about this before when I talked about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, but repetition is fine, as far as I am concerned, when you are talking about something this important.

Ardel Hale Baker was having a heart attack. She was a member of the three affiliated tribes, the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Tribes. She is a member. She was having a heart attack. They put her in an ambulance and sent her to a hospital 85 miles away. When she got to the hospital, they pulled her off of the ambulance gurney to put her in a gurney for the emergency room, and they found a piece of paper taped to her thigh. The piece of paper taped to her thigh said this, it said to the hospital: This is Ardel Hale Baker. If you admit this patient to the hospital, who is having a heart attack, by the way, understand you probably will not be paid for it because there is no contract health funding left for this individual Indian.

So Ardel Hale Baker is having a heart attack, and she is wheeled into an emergency room with a piece of paper taped to her thigh that says: Oh, by the way, hospital, admit this woman, and you may not be paid.

I described the need for Indian health care in the names of two children, one 5, one age 14, both dead. Let me tell my colleagues about them, as I have before. If, after we understand these issues that are going on all around the country in Indian Country, we still say there is no need here and it doesn't matter, then there is something coldhearted about this institution.

Let me describe Ta'shon Rain Littlelight. This beautiful young girl loved to dance, as you can see from the costume. She used to go to the powwows and dance. She was 5 years old and very sick. She was taken to the Indian health clinic again and again and again and again. They diagnosed her illness; depression, they said. So this 5-year-old girl was treated for depression. Then one day she could not bear the pain any longer. They took her to Billings, MT.

By the way, she was on the Crow Reservation in Montana. The way I know about this young girl is her grandmother came to a hearing I held with Senator Tester on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, and she held up a poster this big with a picture of her grandchild, and she described her death.

After being treated for depression, after going to the clinic time and time again and being treated for depression, one day she couldn't bear the pain, and they rushed her to Billings, MT, to a hospital there, and then they rushed her to Denver, CO, to a hospital there, and they said she had 4 months to live because she had terminal cancer-- this, after having been treated for depression for so many months.

Ta'shon Rain Littlelight said to her mom when they were in Denver that the one thing she wanted to do was to go see Cinderella's Castle at Disney World. The Make A Wish Foundation

took this little girl and her mother to Disney World in Orlando, FL, to see Cinderella's Castle. The night before, in the hotel, as they arrived in Orlando, the night before visiting Cinderella's Castle, Ta'shon Rain Littlelight said to her mother: Mommy, I am sorry I am sick. Mother, I am going to try to get better. She cuddled up in her mom's arms and never again woke up. She died in her mother's arms the night before she was to see Cinderella's Castle.

Her family told me this little girl spent the last 3 months of her life in unmedicated pain with a terminal illness, diagnosed as having depression. Her grandmother and her parents wonder, with decent health care, would this young girl have died? Would Ta'shon Rain Littlelight perhaps have lived? Maybe so.

Does it matter that a 5-year-old girl dies because she doesn't get the health care most all of us would expect? It does to me.

There was a 14-year-old girl named Avis Littlewind. She was on the Spirit Lake Nation Reservation. I talked to her family. I talked to her classmates in school. I talked to the Indian tribal council. I did that because Avis Littlewind was a 14-year-old girl who spent the last 3 months of her life curled up in her bed in a fetal position, desperately ill, desperately emotionally ill, with no treatment whatsoever. At the end of that 90 days, she took her own life in her bedroom.

Her sister had taken her own life 2 years prior. Her father had taken his life. She came from a very dysfunctional situation. But somehow a 14-year-old girl is not missed for 90 days? Not in school? On that reservation, they didn't have any mental health treatment capability. They told me they would have had to borrow--had someone known that Avis Littlewind, this child, was lying in bed for 90 days feeling hopeless and helpless, before she took her life--had they been able to find some mental health treatment somewhere, they would have had to borrow a car because there is no vehicle to take someone to treatment. It is a completely dysfunctional system.

These are two children who should not have died among us, but they did, and others will--perhaps today--because we have a health care system in the Indian Health Service that is not working. It is dramatically underfunded.

My colleagues who oppose the bill on the floor of the Senate recently, the Indian Health Care Improvement Act--a couple of my colleagues who voted against the act said we need reform but we are going to vote for additional funding. We are at least $2 billion short of just providing the kind of thing we would expect for us and our family.

Let me ask you this: If your aunt or your grandmother went to a doctor with bone-on-bone in a knee, so she couldn't even walk, it was so painful, a knee condition that was so unbelievably painful she could hardly move, what would we expect? Our families would expect she would get a knee operation and perhaps a new knee joint, have a replacement with a new knee.

I will tell you what happened to a woman who contacted me from the Indian Health Service. She went to the doctor with this unbelievable pain and the inability to move. She was told to wrap that knee in cabbage leaves for 4 days and it would be fine. That is not medicine, that is malpractice. What we would expect for our family would be to have a knee replacement. That is the kind of medicine we would expect. It is not the kind of medicine that is now being delivered.

Yes, there are some good people in the Indian Health Service. There are some who should not be there as well. There are people who work hard and long hours and do a great job, and my hat is off to them. There are some who, long ago, should have been fired, and no one seems willing or able to do it.

In this case, I say people are dying because we are rationing health care. That is a scandal.

I have offered an amendment that would restore $1 billion to this account. The money would be paid for by--I believe it is function 920 that will provide the payment for this. The question is, Will we decide this is a requirement, this is a responsibility? I don't know the answer to that. I have tried before. I guess some are willing to just blithely go along and act as if this doesn't exist, people are not dying, people are not suffering, or if they believe it exists, to say: You know what, it is a tough life out there, it happens. We don't have the funding.

It would have been nice, perhaps, to have told those first Americans, the American Indians, when they sat down at the table and signed the treaty and expected the Federal Government, the United States of America, to keep its promise--it would have been nice, perhaps, when the American Government signed it if they had just said: Look, we are going to try really hard, but we are not sure we can do what we are promising you we will do. We will do our best, but we are not sure we can do that.

We don't have the money, apparently, to help Ta'shon Rain Littlelight or Avis Littlewind, and we don't have the resources or the will, I guess. That is what we are told. I happen to know how much money we have to build health clinics in Iraq. I happen to know we are building 950 water projects in Iraq right now. I know how many electricity projects we are building in the country of Iraq. I know how much we are spending on road projects in the country of Iraq right now.

I went to a hearing yesterday and heard that $18 billion, most of it American money, is unaccounted for in Iraq and wasted. I went to a hearing yesterday to hear that $4 billion, most of it American money in Iraq to provide for additional equipment for Iraq's armed forces, is unaccounted for, and the head of their military who could not account for $4 million is now living in London, a big property holder. So don't tell me there is not money. How about taking some of that money and investing it here at home? How about taking some of that money and deciding to take care of our obligations and our commitments and our promises in this country?

We are going to have a long, tortured trail over this budget. I understand it. Everybody has their own sense of what is important and what is not. But if the health care for children and elders on our Indian reservations, for whom we have a trust responsibility for health care, with whom we have treaties--if that is not an urgency, if that is not something we are willing to commit to do, then, in my judgment, there is something wrong with the value system here.

I know there are so many other priorities. I look at this S. Con. Res. 70. It doesn't contain much but numbers. It is 69 pages of numbers. There are no jobs in here. There is no blood here. There is no health care here. It is just numbers. But all of these numbers mean something in a profound way. These numbers tell the American people what our priorities are and whether we are willing to keep our promises. I hope the answer from the Senate at last, at long, long last, is we will begin--at least begin to keep our promises.

If you few decide you want health care to continue as it is with respect to Indian Health Services, then you must stand up for saying: I believe in health care rationing; we are going to make a decision to withhold health care from people who need it.

The Indian Health Service--let me give an example, on the Fort Berthold Reservation, you go to a clinic that is open from 9 to 5 o'clock 5 days a week. You get sick on Saturday at 6 o'clock, or at night on a weekday, you are in trouble. You are 85 miles from the hospital.

So you go to the hospital in an ambulance that is paid for with contract health care, because they do not have that kind of capability on the reservation. So contract health care. What do they say on Indian reservations? Do not get sick after June, because there is no contract health money. If you are going to get sick, it has got to be before June. If you get sick, otherwise you end up on a gurney with a heart attack with a piece of paper attached to your leg. And the paper says: By the way, hospital, admit this woman and you may not get paid.

That is an unbelievable way for us to meet our obligations. The fact is, we are not keeping our promises. I hope somewhere in the long trail of paper, somewhere in the deep abyss of all of these numbers, perhaps there is a value system, somewhere there is a value system deep in the recesses that will get people here in the Senate to say:

You know what, one of the first obligations of this country is to keep its promises. One of the first obligations of the Senate is to stand up. It is too late for Ta'shon Rain Littlelight, it is too late for Avis Littlewind, but other children will survive and other children will live if we decide to do the right thing.

Now, I wish to say to my colleagues that I would like to offer this amendment. I am told that at some point I will be able to. If I can have a dialog with them, I wish to find out----

I have an amendment I have filed. It is amendment No. 4198. It is at the desk. I ask for its immediate consideration.

I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I have described my amendment at some length. I shall not do so again. But I do appreciate the courtesy of my colleagues, Senator Conrad and Senator Gregg.

I ask that as you consider what you would intend to vote on as we move along this process, that you will give me the opportunity to have a recorded vote as early as is possible.

Mr. President, on March 5, 2008, I introduced a joint resolution of disapproval stating that the December 18, 2007, vote by the Federal Communications Commission to loosen the ban on cross- ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations shall have no force or effect. I am joined by Senators Snowe, Kerry, Collins, Dodd, Stevens, Obama, Harkin, Clinton, Cantwell, Biden, Reed, Feinstein, Sanders, Tester, Leahy, Feingold, and Boxer. We seek with this resolution of disapproval to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's, FCC, fast march to ease media ownership rules.

The FCC has taken a series of destructive actions in the past two decades that I believe have undermined the public interest. On December 18, 2007, they took yet another step in the wrong direction. They gave a further green light to media concentration.

The FCC voted to allow cross-ownership of newspapers and broadcast stations in the top 20 markets, with loopholes for mergers outside of the top 20 markets. The newspapers would be allowed to buy stations ranked above fifth and above.

The rule change was framed as a modest compromise. But make no mistake, this is a big deal. As much as 44 percent of the population lives in the top 20 markets of the United States. When nearly half of the people in this country are told that in their cities and towns the media will get the thumbs up to consolidate, they will not be happy. And with the loopholes in the rule, the FCC spurs a new wave of media consolidation in both large and small media markets.

The last time the FCC tried to do this, the U.S. Senate voted to block it. On September 16, 2003, the Senate voted 55 to 40 to support a ``resolution of disapproval'' of the FCC's previous decision to further consolidate media. We warned Chairman Martin that if he rushed this vote we would have to use the resolution of disapproval again.

On December 4th the Commerce Committee reported out the bipartisan ``Media Ownership Act of 2007,'' S. 2332 with 25 co-sponsors, requiring the FCC to give more time for public comment and study the issues of localism and diversity. The Chairman overlooked this bill.

On the day before the vote, 27 Senators sent them a letter in opposition to such a rushed vote on the rules. He went ahead anyway.

The FCC rushed towards a December 18th vote with a complete disregard for the process, let alone the substance of their ruling.

They rushed to finish the localism and ownership hearings with as little as 5 business days of notice before the last hearings.

The Chairman put out the proposed rule changes on November 13th in a New York Times op-ed--after the comment period had closed.

He then didn't give the public nearly enough opportunity to comment on the actual rule changes that were voted on. He gave the public just 28 days to comment on the proposed rules. While he likes to speak of giving 120 days and six hearings around the country, this was prior to the announcement of what rules would actually change. And he ignored the public testimony anyway.

This was hardly an open and deliberative process. It is a massive rush and a big mistake.

This rule will undercut localism and diversity of ownership around the country. Studies show that removing the ban on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership results in a net loss in the amount of local news produced in the market as a whole. In addition, while the FCC suggests that cross-ownership is necessary to save failing newspapers, the publicly traded newspapers earn annual rates of return between 16 and 18 percent.

This Resolution of Disapproval will ensure this rule change has no effect. This is again a bipartisan effort to stop the FCC from destroying the local interests that we have always felt must be a part of broadcasting.

It is time to ensure that we first protect localism and diversity, which the FCC appears to have long forgotten. Only then can we really review the rules of media ownership in a thorough process to see if it is actually in the public interest to reverse any of those rules, or if greater public interest protections are necessary.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside.

Mr. President, I send another amendment to the desk and ask for its consideration; amendment No. 4098.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the amendment be considered read.

Mr. President, this issue of imported products from abroad in an increasingly globalized world is a very significant and serious issue. I am not one who suggests we can retreat from the global economy. Clearly, the global economy exists. I would say the rules for the global economy have not nearly kept pace with the galloping movement of this global economy and, as a result of it, we have some very serious trade issues, we have imbalances in trade, we have the largest trade deficit in human history, we have the loss of American jobs being shipped overseas, and then we have, in addition to all that, we have products that are now made overseas, shipped into this country, that we have discovered are dangerous products.

My colleague from Arkansas, Senator Pryor, under his leadership, and with others, have brought a bill to the floor of the Senate. I am on the Senate Commerce Committee, and I was pleased to work with them and play a very small role in helping create this legislation, but I wish to commend my colleague and others for bringing a bill to the floor that gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission some additional authority.

Now, the Consumer Product Safety Commission is headed by somebody who didn't want the authority; didn't seem to think it was necessary, unfortunately. We need someone at the Consumer Product Safety Commission who is very interested, very alert, and very engaged on these issues. Because the fact is, these can be life-or-death issues. That is a plain fact.

Now, the amendment I have offered, the second amendment, is relatively simple. I wish to describe it. It is an amendment that says the Consumer Product Safety Commission should have the authority to permanently ban imports from certain producers, foreign producers, that have shown a persistent pattern of shipping unsafe products to our shores. Let me repeat. This simply gives the Consumer Product Safety Commission the authority to ban imported toys from unsafe producers.

Under this amendment, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would have the full discretion to decide whether a particular case warrants such a ban. I think it would shock most Americans to learn that there is no such authority that exists at the moment. We can have a company that sends us once, twice, 4 times, 5 times, 10 times or 20 times unsafe products into this country, and there is no authority for anyone to ban that company from shipping products into the U.S. marketplace. That is wrong.

So let's say that a company, in this case let me say China--and I don't mean to pick on the Chinese, but the fact is 85 percent of the toys that come into this country are coming in from China--let's say a manufacturer has a complete and persistent record of painting their toys with lead paint. How often should we allow that company to be caught sending toys into this country with lead paint; lead paint that has a significant capacity to provide injury to children? How long should we allow that to happen? Under current law, the answer is, there is no limit.

Hopefully, we will find the toys and prevent them from being on the store shelves. But at the present time, there is no limit, and no one has the capability to ban the producers from sending those products into this country.

There are Chinese companies producing for U.S. brands that have had many repeated problems. In September, Mattel, Incorporated, announced the third massive recall in a 5-week period. At that point, Mattel found 848,000 Chinese-made Barbie and Fisher-Price toys that had excessive amounts of lead paint. Toys were pulled from the store shelves at that point, and that included Barbie kitchens, furniture items, Fisher-Price train toys, and Bongo Band drums, among others. The surface paints on these toys contained excessive levels of lead, which is prohibited under Federal law because, frankly, it is unsafe for children.

Now, in addition to those recalls, Mattel has recalled nearly 9 million Chinese-made toys coated with toxic lead paint and other safety problems. The plastic preschool toys sold under the Fisher-Price brand in the United States include the popular Big Bird, Elmo, Dora, and the Diego characters.

In June of last year, RC2 Corporation recalled 1.5 million wooden railroad toys and set parts from its Thomas & Friends. Most parents of young children will recognize Thomas & Friends, the wooden railway product line, which was made by Hansheng Wood Products factory using lead paint. So 1.5 million of these toys were headed to the store shelves in this country.

Now, the question: Why would a producer anywhere use lead paint? Well, because lead paint is bright, it is durable, it is flexible, it is fast drying, and most of all, it is cheap. China mass produces lead paint and coloring agents such as lead chromate because they are generally cheaper than organic pigments.

But lead is dangerous even in small quantities. We have known that for a long while in this country. Going back to 1978, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission made it illegal to use any paint containing more than 0.06 percent of lead for residential structures, hospitals, and children's products.

We have known about lead for so long that Ben Franklin wrote about the dangers of lead. Ben Franklin wrote a letter about the bad effects of lead taken inwardly. Some 19th century paint companies advertised their paint in newspaper ads bragging it was lead free. So this isn't some new discovery, that lead is a problem and a potential human health problem. And it is no accident that some of these toys are containing excessive levels of lead paint. Because, as I said, lead is cheap, the contractors that are making these products are trying to lower costs, and they are not spending a lot of time wondering about human health issues.

Now, let me describe this silver chain. This is a Chinese-made charm.

This charm is an example of a heartbreaking case. This happened in March 2006 when a 4-year-old Minnesota boy died of lead poisoning after swallowing this small, heart-shaped charm that came as a gift with a purchase of Reebok tennis shoes. A little 4-year-old boy swallowed this, and this was 99 percent lead. The fact is, these kinds of circumstances can kill. Unsafe toys can kill.

Jarnell died because a trinket, made of 99 percent lead, was included with a shoe, and that trinket was swallowed by a young child, and he is dead.

Ann Brown, who headed the Consumer Product Safety Commission from 1994 to 2001--and by the way, I might say, she was an extraordinary public servant, did a wonderful job. She said there should be an outright ban on any lead in any toy product. She said: If I were at the CPSC now, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, I would say that trying to recall tainted products is like picking sand out of the beach: it is just not possible. I agree with that.

The only way to make certain our products on our store shelves are safe, and especially toy products that are going to be used by our children, is to give the officials who are supposed to be monitoring this and regulating this the authority to permanently ban unsafe producers. Short of that, we are going to continue to see these problems. Then we are going to scratch our heads and wonder: Why do these still exist? The reason they still exist is the same companies are shipping us tainted products and unsafe products. This is not rocket science. We have seen the products, we have read about the products, we have heard about the products. They include, yes, a trinket with a tennis shoe; they include a small wooden toy painted with lead paint; they include toothpaste; they include cat food, contaminated shrimp, car tires--you name it.

The question is, Who is going to stand up for and support the interest of American consumers? I think it has been the case that when these problems came to light and people lost their lives because of them, many of the producers, particularly some in China, said: None of this is true. These are problems that are exaggerated, and our products are safe.

Then, in June, when there was a tremendous outcry here in the United States, regulators in China finally said they had closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations. China Daily, the nation's English-language newspaper, said industrial chemicals, including dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, and formaldehyde, had been found in everything from candy to pickles to biscuits to seafood. China announced on July 9 of last year that it had actually executed the former head of its food and drug safety agency for accepting bribes in excess of $800,000 in exchange for approving substandard medicines.

Well, we know the problem. That is why we have a bill on the floor of the Senate. We know at least a part of this solution. The bill on the floor of the Senate is a good bill. But I have an amendment that would improve it, so that when you have a company that has a persistent and consistent and relentless problem of shipping unsafe products to this country, we can say: Stop, you cannot do it anymore.

I read a while back about a guy in my home State who was picked up 13 or 14 times for drunk driving. Our State said: Stop. You cannot drive any more. It is over. We are not putting up with this.

We ought to do the same thing with companies--not only in China but elsewhere--that send unsafe or tainted products that are unsafe for American consumers and especially children. We ought to do the same thing to companies that do that over and over again. If they are not willing to abide by the regulatory processes and by the standards we set and adopt in this country, then they are not welcome any longer to ship products to our store shelves. So I offer an amendment that would allow us at least the authority--not the requirement, the authority--to outright ban products from companies that have a record of persistent problems in sending unsafe or tainted products to our store shelves.

Again, I wanted to say that as all of this has played out, this is all part of the global economy these days. You know, you produce somewhere and ship it somewhere else, and someone consumes it. I have spoken extensively about this, this issue of the global economy that has galloped forward, but the rules have not kept pace. This is one more area where the rules have not kept pace, and this underlying piece of legislation is an attempt to establish better rules.

Now, the fact is, we cannot force this to work unless we have people in agencies who are hired and paid by the Federal Government who want to do their job. The fact is, we have had abysmal leadership at one of the agencies that ought to have been involved in stopping this. It is unbelievable to me that someone collects a paycheck and has a sense of self-worth if they are not interested in standing up for what their agency should stand up for, but that has been the case.

So we bring a piece of legislation to the floor that is a good piece of legislation, that establishes new rules, rules that will provide for safety for American consumers. But we need better management and better leadership as well at some of these agencies who have decided they are going to stand up for consumers too.

Amendment No. 4122

I wish to mention the second amendment I have offered, which is one about which I will not speak at great length. I wish to visit with the manager of the bill at some point. That is an amendment which would strike the provision that allows the Commission to certify a proprietary laboratory for third-party testing. I would like to see independent testing. Let me hasten to say I accept the good intentions, the good will of those who wish to test themselves, but in my judgment, when you have proprietary testing, it is a step or several steps away from independent testing. I wanted to talk to the manager of the bill about this amendment to see if we can find a way to at least make sure all testing that is done represents truly independent testing.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Mr. President, I wish to finish my comments with another point.

Yesterday, I came to the floor, and I was going to offer an amendment, but there was an objection because my amendment is admittedly not germane. I will not attempt to offer it today. I understand others are not offering the nongermane amendments, so I will certainly not offer mine, except to say I intend to offer it every chance I get. I will find a crevice someplace on an authorization bill or I will do it on the Energy and Water appropriations bill that I write because writing the chairman's mark gives me an opportunity to simply write it in.

It deals with this question of today, on Wednesday, we are sticking 60,000 to 70,000 barrels of oil underground in one of our domes to save it for the future, at a point when the price of gasoline is at $3, $3.50, going to $4 a gallon and oil is rocketing up around $103 a barrel and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, where we store oil underground for a rainy day, is 97 percent full. We have the administration taking oil from the Gulf of Mexico as royalty-in-kind from oil wells, and instead of putting it into the supply and converting it to money for the Federal Government, they are sticking it underground and saving it for a rainy day. This is, by the way, a subset of oil called sweet light crude. What that does is put upward pressure on oil and gas prices at exactly the wrong time.

This is not rocket science either. Why would you pick the highest price of oil and say: By the way, the Federal Government has decided, in addition to all of the other issues out there with respect to energy policy, we have decided to see if we cannot put some upward pressure on gas prices, and they have. Government witnesses testified before the Energy Committee yesterday and admitted that this puts upward pressure on gas prices. So why on Earth would we stick 60,000 or 70,000 barrels of oil a day underground? That is unbelievable to me. It is going to double. There are going to be 125,000 barrels a day in the second half of this year, sticking it in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

I now have a piece of legislation that would say: You cannot do that. There has to be a 1-year pause unless the price of oil goes back below $75. But if it does not, there has to be a 1-year pause, that the oil has to go into the supply, not underground.

The Federal Government ought not be making things worse for consumers, you know. There are a lot of interests here that are causing American drivers to be burned at the stake, but the Federal Government is carrying the wood when it is putting oil underground. That makes no sense at all. We have OPEC, all of these other issues. We have unbelievable speculation in the market, with hedge funds and investment banks knee-deep in a carnival of speculation.

We had a witness testify that the oil futures market has become like a 24/7 casino--never closes. The result of all of this speculation by people who are trading in oil--and they will never have the oil and never get oil, yet they are trading futures contracts and driving up the price every time as all of that speculation goes on. I think that deserves and needs an investigation.

Our Federal Government has decided on a policy of taking oil out of the supply and sticking it underground. There is only one word for that; that is, ``nuts.'' We have to stop it.

I was not able to offer this amendment on this bill yesterday, but I will be back with this amendment. In my judgment, we will have a vote on it in the Senate because we have the votes to pass it and say to this administration: Stop it. Put an end to it. Put that oil in the supply and put downward pressure on gas prices and downward pressure on oil prices.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that an oversight hearing has been scheduled before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

The hearing will be held on Wednesday, March 26, 2008, at 10:30 a.m., in the Missouri Room at Bismarck State College located at 1500 Edwards Avenue, Bismarck, ND 58501.

The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on the challenges associated with rapid deployment of large-scale carbon capture and storage technologies.

Because of the limited time available for the hearing, witnesses may testify by invitation only. However, those wishing to submit written testimony for the hearing record may do so by sending it to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, United States Senate, Washington, DC 20510-6150, or

by e-mail to [email protected]

For further information, please contact Allyson Anderson at (202) 224-7143 or Rosemarie Calabro at (202) 224-5039.